Wow. Just... wow. I have to hand it to The Mentalist. The previews showed several agents dying and lots of tension and upheaval at CBI. But really, I thought there would be some trick to it. Agents we've never met would be killed or something similar. But they actually killed off regulars! Another agent quits! Two people professed love for one another!

This was like a season finale, really, which makes me really excited to see how this season is going to end.

So this episode had two things that scare the hell out of me: prison and mice. I think we all view prison as a place that would freak us out if we ever found ourselves in one. I hate the very thought of being in that situation. I think I'd try to escape like Jane did tonight. What's the worst that could happen, they'd send you to prison?

As for mice, I have a few every winter in my apartment. They come in through the wall behind the fridge looking for warmth and food. Really irritating and gross.

(S02E03) "I didn't lie ... he made risotto." Lisbon, to Jane, about a certain cooking show with "the angry man" she watched on Tuesday

Hypnotism is a lame shortcut in TV shows and movies. Hypnotists seem to do it so easily, and the subjects seem to be put under so quickly and then remember just enough to solve the puzzle or at least advance the plot to another point.

That's why tonight's hypnotism of Lisbon by Jane was so satisfying. I groaned when it started, but I like the fact that he hypnotized her without her knowing it, how she made a comment about Rigsby and Van Pelt while under, and how the hypnotism didn't really work in the end.

(S02E02) Tonight's episode of The Mentalist was an incisive look at how the ... HEY THAT WAS STARSKY!

Yes, Paul Michael Glaser made an appearance in this episode, and it's good to see him in something else besides those fix-your-credit commercials.

This season seems to be about the personal lives of Jane and Lisbon a lot more than the first season was, how the search for Red John is affecting both of them (Jane is on the outside of the investigation; Jane is seeing a psychiatrist because of what happened in the season finale). Last season I didn't want every other episode to be about Red John, and I still don't, but I'm more intrigued by the Red John investigation than the murder-of-the-week. Where last season the tension in the CBI regarding cases and who was in charge was scattered here and there; that tension seems to be a theme this second season.

(S02E01) "If you sit by the river bank long enough you'll see the bodies of your enemies float by." - Patrick Jane

Where will the second season of The Mentalist go? Will we focus on Red John the whole time or will we get cases of the week until we have a Red John episode? It looks like it's going to be more of the latter (though there's a big plot development concerning the Red John case in this season opener), and that's just fine.

I do wish the cases were more Columbo or Murder, She Wrote-ish, though.

Patrick Jane came very close to catching Red John on The Mentalist last season, but it wasn't to be (not yet anyway). In this clip from the season opener this Thursday at 10 (new night and time), Jane and Lisbon are taken off the case because they are too close to it and we're introduced to the new guy in charge of it.

(Side note: it's funny that this clip is sponsored by - at least when I watched it - Red Robin! Is that a coincidence or on purpose?)